Party Games

Some of the most innovative videogames of recent years have been ones that have tried to appeal to the mainstream game player, your Mum and your Nan. To appeal to such a broad audience developers have had to think outside of the box. It is highly unlikely that a 5 hour Halo gaming session is your family's ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon, even if on Legendary setting. The games that have done most to broaden the appeal of gameplaying are the eyetoy and
SingStar, both of these are PS2 games and it is interesting to see that Sony is keen to exploit this market.

Unlike Nintendo which has a rich tradition for unusal and innovative games and consoles Sony does not. However what cannot be disputed are how much fun these vidoegames can be, partly because they rely on the ability to sing or simply move as instructed.





Given the universal nature of these games it is worth thinking about the player expereince.

Nintendo have also produced games that appeal to a broader cross section of player including Donkey Konga and Nintendogs. They are also developing a newcontroller that could change the way that we play videogames... Enter the Wii...